roman
#275 – Aericus Amor
Born 41 AD in Rome, Aericus is a senator masquerading as an actor to be closer to his forbidden love, a pleb Philetus, star of Virgil’s Aeneid.
RomanPunks is a retrofuturistic, cyberpunk derivative world-building project inspired by fine art, history and the cryptopunk movement.
A total of 1,000 RomanPunk characters have been frozen in time and minted as Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) on the Ethereum, WAX, Polygon and Algorand blockchains.
RomanPunk characters are comprised of commoners and famous individuals based on Roman history, art history and pop culture.
The basis for RomanPunk lore and backstories is exhaustively researched by history/sci-fi buff and co-founder, Punktavian.
All images are drawn by hand by woman artist and co-founder, Cleopunktra, without the aid of AI or generative tools.
RomanPunks came into existence through early minting on OpenSea, promoting on Twitter and building a Discord community through giveaways and engagement. The idea of a cyberpunk-derivative ‘RomanPunk’ theme was in our heads for years, but it was the success of the Cryptopunks that became the catalyst for project conception and launch.
After a hard working first 60 days spent networking and attracting new collectors to RomanPunks, our community had begun to flourish and sales increased. We began to offer our collectors an opportunity to battle their NFTs in a tournament bracket powered by dice rolls.
Encouraged by the tight knit community and the carbon-neutral blockchain with lightning fast and low cost transactions, we launched 'romanpunksio' collection on WAX Blockchain as the first step to expand the backstories of our RomanPunk characters and the baseline for future development of a card game.
RomanPunks integrated with Chainlink Labs to utilize VRF (Verified Randomness Function) to host a giveaway raffle for our holders. We developed a smart contract on Ethereum which guarantees true random number selection on chain and can be used for a wide range of functions that require random selection.
After much anticipation in the community, we released our first WAX NFT card 'pack' through the Neftyblocks platform, which sold out in less than a week.
We launched our Twitch channel and begun building an audience by offering numerous giveaways of WAX NFTs from our collection, as well as giving participants a chance to win RomanPunk ETH NFT airdrops for taking top spot at the end of the 'season'.
As firm believers in a metaverse future and land owners in The Sandbox, we undertook to build the RomanPunk Colosseum on 1x1 land and entered our experience "Gladiator Bloodsport" into a GameJam contest. We will continue to build the Colosseum into a PVP arena and social hub once The Sandbox offers creators the ability to do so.
Thanks to the user friendly tools offered by NeftyBlocks, we launched a comprehensive blending system on WAX, allowing our collectors to blend the common NFTs they earn in our Discord RPG up into Legendary famous NFTs through the use of blending 'coins' that can also be earned on the Discord as reward for helping to promote the RomanPunks project.
We launched the VX collection on Polygon. Each owner of an ETH NFT gets their voxel equivalent airdropped to them, and these NFTs can be redeemed for official NFTs on The Sandbox Marketplace once available.
All 1,000 original, unique 1:1 RomanPunk characters hand drawn by Cleopunktra and minted on OpenSea.
The RomanPunk WAX NFT Trading Card Fighter Pack Series II consists of 3 NFTs randomly selected from over 236 characters.
Upcoming plans for RomanPunks include:
Below is a comprehensive and searchable directory of all 1,000 RomanPunk Characters.
Born 41 AD in Rome, Aericus is a senator masquerading as an actor to be closer to his forbidden love, a pleb Philetus, star of Virgil’s Aeneid.
Born 209 BC in Ancyra, Cinderella and her husband, Artox, were transported by unknown forces to the 33rd century AD where she manages his cyber x-games career and operates a lucrative gambling ring.
Born 1915 AD in Flavia Solva within an atompunk alternate dimension under Roman global hegemony, Maccus is a criminologist working for the Empire to root out communist infiltrators, employing cybernetic torture techniques to extract confessions; meanwhile, he secretly engages in necrophilic reanimation experiments with the undead.
Born 125 AD in Emerita Augusta, Mads is an ancestor of Ferdinand Magellan and a former slave who, after being released from servitude on a Roman quinquereme, became an interdimensional explorer and the first ancient citizen to visit hedonistic late 20th century AD.
Born 55 BC in Babylon, Shamma is a gifted lyre player who was abducted by time traffickers, brainwashed and forced to perform in a karaoke band in 26th century AD Neo-Byzantium.
Born in 134 BC in Ctesiphon, Azafrooz is a soldier in the army of Mithridates II of Parthia who, along with his brother Vorn accompanied the envoy Orobazus to parley with the Roman Sulla. Having failed to negotiate a truce, Azafrooz returned home in shame, while Vorn was enslaved as a gladiator.
Born 89 AD in Rome, Oppius was a member of the Punktorian Guard sent through an interdimensional portal on a reconnaissance mission by Emperor Hadrian; however, Oppius preferred the alternate 28th century AD reality and never attempted to return.
Backstory:
Born in 92 AD in Petra, Omar saw the annexation of the Nabataean kingdom by the Emperor Trajan as a teenager. Rather than live under the Roman yoke, Omar fled into the desert and was believed to have traveled through a dimensional portal in Egypt.
Born 405 AD in Pelso, Tina was the illegitimate daughter of Godigisel and a servant woman. Interdimensional traveler and half sister to King Genseric, she led Vandal troops razing cities across Spain, Africa and Italy, culminating in the great Sack of Rome in 455 AD.
Born in 71 AD in Sarmizegetusa, Botilda was a footsoldier in the army of Decebalus who fought against Emperor Trajan. Botilda was part of an elite shock troop unit that moonlighted as dimension-hopping vampire slayers.
Born 199 BC in Pella, Philip was enslaved by the Romans after losing the Third Macedonian War, then forced to fight as a gladiator for the entertainment of the masses. However, at the moment of glorious death in battle, his consciousness was ‘freejacked’ by time-traffickers to the 23rd century AD Britannia where he battles in a cloned body for the Interdimensional Cybergladiator League (ICL) on a squad sponsored by the Algorand Foundation, known as the AlgoSaxons.
Born in 2251 AD in Nyssa, Zoron is a prodigal equestrian and degenerate gambler who lost his entire ancestral fortune on cyberchariot races. After failing to repay a loan, a shylock took his eyes as collateral and replaced them with a Giordi visor, which is programmed to shut off if he misses any future payments.
Born 213 BC in Rome, Cambria and her sister Ursula were born with silver spoons in their mouths. Cambria, who had a history of brawling in the streets in her youth, was installed by her patrician father as a military commander in a reserve unit to keep her busy and out of trouble.
Born in 109 BC in Coracesium, Calypso was an infamous pirate queen who wreaked havoc on Roman shipping until she was captured by Pompey and sentenced to fight in the gladiator pits of Rome.
Born 1939 AD in Yokohama Nova as an orphan raised by Bushido cyborgs, Hana became a dimension-hopping geisha assassin, infamous for dispatching powerful men with a pillow-muffled 9mm shot to the face.
